Sydney 1st Round

At the start of the day I was divided between two matches, so it worked out well in the end, as I decided to watch Juan Monaco and Fernando Verdasco, it was a smaller court and easier to get a seat, while my friend watched the Igor Andreev and Richard Gasquet match. This worked out very well and both results went the right way.

Monaco played very well in his match, he served well and his service action has changed a bit, so it's going to take time for the benefits to be seen. The good thing about this match was while Verdasco seemed to be a bit flat, it was very warm or might have had something wrong with him. Monaco was able to keep the rallies long and moved his opponent around well and moved forward into the net when the opportunity arose and this with a combination of Verdasco's errors contributed to a clear and easy victory.

On the other court I managed to see the last part of the Andreev/Gasquet match and Igor was handling him quite easily. At the start of the match Igor was just getting such kick of his serve and was moving it around and it threw out Gasquet's timing and then dominating with his forehand and Richey looked lost. Then as soon as I got there, Igor then broke back to level it and then broke again and served for the match and took it easily. It was a good win for Andreev and he will definitely play his 39 tournaments a year.

Then went to watch my favourite Aussie Peter Luczak play against Malisse. Luczak lost in Adelaide, but was able to turn the tide here and was hitting some very good length and he battled well in the heat, the thing with Malisse even when he is winning, he looks very disinterested in what's going on until a linesperson pisses him off. There were plenty of rumours going around that he was going to default this match or pull out, but he played it and fair play to Luczak for getting the job done, it will be tough for him against Andreev.

Back onto court 3 which is good as there is shade from the tents on one side of the court and that makes it more pleasurable to watch the matches. It was Seppi time yet again and he go to play "The Flea" Vliegen who just came from Chennai. It wasn't the greatest match and someone had hopes for this being a straight sets win and it should have been. Seppi was controlling the match and won the 1st set easily enough, there were a few breaks in the second set, then it got to a tiebreaker and Seppi made some sloppy errors in the breaker and lost it easily. Luckily Seppi woke up and took his chances in the 3rd set and the Flea was getting more irritable and the combination of jetlag and the heat got to him and Seppi drove him his advantage and he loves the 3 setters, he should match tough by now.

Saw the 1st set of Blake and Sanguinetti and that was a fun set of tennis. The wily Sanguinetti used to be a big fan of Miloslav Mecir and for that alone he has gone up in my estimations. Davide plays an old fashioned game and the contrast with Blake is stark. I mean Blake is one of the dumbest tennis players on the ATP in a tennis and not an intellectual sense, he just hits the ball without any thought and runs well. Blake was just hitting forehand after forehand and the old fox was just getting them back deep and frustrating the hell out of him.

Sanguinetti was serving for the set at 5-3, but lost his serve and then got into the tiebreaker and got a dud call and went over the linesman who had sunglasses on and it was a bit dark and grabbed them and made fun of the eyesight, there are always some form of shenaningans when he is on court.

Berdych and Davydenko. It seems the PMK is a bit of a bogeyman for him, though initially it didn't seem the case. Berdych was playing very well, hitting hard and deep and using good angles and he got a break at 5-3 and was serving for the set and then showed his Berdbrain tendencies and threw it away with a poor game and then he had a set point on PMK's serve and then blew that and went to the tiebreaker and PMK was solid, but Berdych was making silly errors. The last set continued along those lines, it was solid play from PMK and elementary errors from Berdych.

One of the funny things from this match was the bugs and moths that come from the floodlights, these were really bothering Berdych and he let himself get distracted against a opponent that is difficult to beat. This is the third time that Berdych has had the advantage over PMK and managed to blow it, he did it in Rotterdam and in Montreal, just hope he is ready for a big AO campaign.

Last day in Sydney and 1st round of the AO qualies coming later today.